Smoke season(ed) 🍽

In three short months, The Chuckwagon 719 has founded a fervent following with its true Texas barbecue

Chuckwagon 719’s pulled pork, sausage, brisket and beef cheeks. Photos by Matthew Schniper.

The Chuckwagon 719 doesn’t need me to tell you how good they are. They’re gonna sell out of their true Texas barbecue in an hour or so regardless. A line will greet them upon opening. People will sheepishly approach their window after closing in hopes that there’s anything left.

If anything, by writing this, I’m just adding to your wait in line, or diminishing your chances of nabbing any barbecue on a given day from their food cart.

For those of you who’ve stood in line for Franklin Barbecue, this is your moment.

“For us, it’s always going to be waking up and starting the smoker at 4 a.m., because no matter what, it’s gonna be fresh. That’s the epitome of Texas barbecue,” says Jared Hammond, co-owner/co-chef of Chuckwagon 719 with his wife Deidre. 

The couple, along with their two young adult sons, operate the food cart four days a week. On those days, they light the fire for the next cook session from the coals of the prior one, running two 150-gallon smokers around the clock. First they smoke their briskets and beef ribs, and then pork ribs and housemaid sausages. Deidre’s in charge of prep for the side items: potato salad, coleslaw, Chuckwagon beans.

They set up for service at noon — most often at 6453 Omaha Blvd. outside of The Sourdough Boulangerie — and within an hour they’re typically sold out. The word has gotten out. Lines form early. It’s like the whole fiasco around coveted and celebrated outfits around Texas. That’s by design. 

The line outside Nano 108 Brewing one recent weekend.

Chuckwagon only launched in mid April, but at the time of my mid-June visit, the Hammonds were already eying expansion. They were in the process of completing the purchase of a custom-made 500-gallon smoker, fabricated from an old propane tank purchased in Albuquerque. Soon, they may be able to hold out service for up to four hours before selling out. Those tanks are getting hard to find around Texas, Jared says, noting he’s had it mounted on a boat trailer, with a carbon steel box and smoke stack attached. The doors are so heavy they had to order counterweights be made. Just like seasoning cast iron pans with oil, he’s had half a cord of post oak wood burned to season the tank. 

Post oak’s what they use in central Texas, he says, while they use pecan in the east and mesquite in the west. Post oak’s all he smokes with. He’s Texas born and bred. His grandfather lived in Lubbock, and his family lived around the Houston area. He started cooking at age 12, “and not just making mac n cheese,” he clarifies. “Like searing steaks. My dad showed me how to cook ribs when I was 16, and even since then smoking has been a steady thing in my life.” 

He became so well regarded for his briskets that friends would order them from him. “We’d have backyard barbecues literally weekly, to the point where if I wasn’t cooking at my house, I’d be doing it at a friend’s,” he says.  

Yeah, a lot of people naively opened restaurants because their friends told them their food was good, but fewer actually have the chops and long-term fortitude to pull it off. (One of my best chef friends always calls the industry a house of cards.) Jared and his family do have what it takes. That much is clear already.  

Their classic Texas brisket and beef ribs are epic. So’s their more modern beef cheek interpretation. Their super smokey sausage and bourbon-glazed pork ribs are more signature and personalized, as are a small array of simple but excellent side items. 

People will often lament that there’s no good barbecue in Colorado Springs, and that’s a bit of a harsh overstatement. But I can’t argue that there’s not been any truly great barbecue to be had, the stuff that lives up to the finest in the South (where I grew up). Chuckwagon is great in this way. That’s why the lines, and the sell outs and the early fanaticism. 

Deidre and Jared Hammond with their new smoker. (Photo courtesy the Hammonds.)

I’m telling you all this framework before I even get into describing the barbecue in detail because in a way all the demand and deserved hype speak for the product. I could stop writing now and you’ll probably plan to go check it out anyway. (But what’s the fun in that for me?)

The Hammonds are obsessed with quality ingredients. They currently buy Wyoming-raised Bootheel 7 Ranch beef. They’d wanted to work with Ranch Foods Direct (a Side Dish sponsor), and still hope to, but RFD may not be able to meet their quantity needs for briskets and ribs and such, as it must move enough ground beef to keep up with demand for primal cuts (by way of some behind-the-scenes backstory). The Hammonds source pork from different areas. “I’m not the guy who’s going to go to Costco and buy some KC Masterpiece and throw my own stuff in to call it good,” says Jared. “Everything we do involves a ton of work. It’s why we can only do the volume of business we currently do. We pride ourselves on buying quality things.”

Example: For his sausage, he sources high-end casings from Germany and buys high-temp cheese that performs better than cheap cheese, he says. He grinds down his own beef and pork trim and hand-stuffs the sausages. The day we dine, we relish a jalapeño cheddar flavor that exudes a huge campfire smoke flavor; its interior is rich and creamy in a unctuous way.

“Even our potato salad has an ingredient you can only find in Texas,” he says. That, by the way, presents an interesting hybrid between a dill- and sweet-style (minus the actual dill) and has a mustard-mayo base. It’s perfectly just-wet, not oversaturated or mushy, finishing with a hint of celery seed and clean, simple boiled potato flavor. While on side items I should note the house slaw is awesome too, crisp and a little sweet and tangy. It’s also got a nice coarse black pepper bite and its mild vinegar influence helps cut through the barbecue fat and add a little lightness to a meal.

His loss leader is the beef ribs, which he says he sometimes loses money on due to shrinkage during the cooking. He should be charging $40 a bone instead of $30, he says, noting some people already don’t want to pay that (not understanding the true cost). Those ribs are sold out by the time we make it through the line, but Hammond (not knowing who I was, but just doing as he does) throws a fat cap off them into my order (a mixed tray of meats by the quarter, half or full pound) at no additional charge. It’s a bit of gooey goodness so rich and eye-roll-inducing that he calls it “cheesecake” and “divine,” and I completely agree. It’s like a giant wad of bone marrow — that rich.

Similar to his brisket, which only gets salt and pepper, “the Texas way,” the beef ribs are sparsely seasoned, with only one other secret ingredient which adds a depth to its inherent meatiness. By contrast, his pork ribs do get garlic, onion, paprika and sugar in addition to the salt and pepper for a much more seasoning-influenced flavor to the them. The also get a proprietary “spritz” in lieu of a mop sauce. We don’t buy them, instead diving into the pulled pork, which is chopped down into a wet tuna fish texture, finishing with a smoked fish jerky flavor as I perceive it, by association perhaps. That’s partly due to the sweetness of a bourbon whiskey glaze.

That’s one of Chuckwagon’s departures from true-Texas barbecue, as is a poignant Chuckwagon sauce that’s punchy and acidic from apple cider vinegar and a little tomato paste but thick and hearty from a butter base and a little sweet from brown sugar. (They’ve started to sell it in bottles.) We initially thought we tasted red bell peppers in the sauce due to a vegetal nature, my girlfriend accurately pinning a muhummara-like taste to it. It’s damn interesting and complementary of all the meats. Jared says he’s been working on the recipe for seven years. With these touches, he says it’s fair to call Chuckwagon “modern Texas barbecue” in addition to traditional.

Our tray of mixed meats and sides plus a slice of Sourdough Boulangerie French white bread that’s basically an artisan Texas toast.

But let’s get to the showcase item: the brisket. The Hammonds buy whole briskets, and as noted above, only use salt and pepper on them along with the post wood smoke. As in Texas, when guests order they can request “moist” or “lean” which equates to point (the fatty part, called deckle) or flat (the remaining lean parts). If no request is made, Jared usually defers to a mix. All the pieces have a beautiful dark bark and a pretty pink smoke ring. The beef cheeks (another modern item) in particular absorb a deep smoke ring and turn vibrant pink. They eat super tender too due to all the collagen broken down in them from the slow cook. I’d never had cheeks prepped this way (as I usually use the cut in other Instant Pot recipes at home) but I’m convinced we’ll see much more of this in the marketplace soon. They’re stellar.

Anyway, my girlfriend lived in Austin for many years and can vouch for true Texas brisket, the great stuff, and she says this is it. She texts her brother in Fort Collins with a food report while we’re eating. He analyses pictures from her phone to weigh in from afar, just based off the images.

Some items we don’t get to and must return for: Texas Twinkies, banana pudding and Chuckwagon beans.

So aside from the true Texas roots and meticulous sourcing of quality ingredients, what else sets Chuckwagon apart? I would say artistry. Jared is a craftsperson by nature, and formerly made his living through glassblowing for more than a decade. That’s what brought him to Colorado in 2014. He was creating high-end glass pipes and bongs for the marijuana industry. He became known in that industry for a customizable hourglass timer (for dab nail heating) filled with glow-in-the-dark sand. His pieces sold online from anywhere from $400 to $1200, he says.

Now that he’s left that world behind for full focus on his food craft, Jared’s remembering back to when he’d considered culinary school. That was before he got into glass. A friend who’d been cooking professionally advised him against it. “He said you don’t want to do this,” says Jared. “But funny enough, we talked last month and he said he’s glad I got back into it.”

All of us who’ve been to Chuckwagon now are glad too. And I do have a bit of good news for your chances of getting some of the great stuff without fear of it selling out before you arrive (which happened to me on my first attempt). Chuckwagon’s in talks with the Sourdough Boulangerie — from whom they source all their bread and buns — for a sublease (in an adjacent storefront) that would allow them to share some space and operate out of brick-and-mortar soon. Combine that with his new smoker’s capacity and Chuckwagon’s scarcity issue will be a little less of a problem — for now.

But don’t expect to not be greeted by a line whenever you do go, unless you’re the early bird who posts up before service to be the head of that line. Still, one way or the other you’re going to wait. And you won’t be disappointed for having done so. Remember, it’s all by design.

A closer look at the brisket.